If you offered me the choice between a home with carpet and one without it, I’d take the one with the carpet every 
time. In fact, when I bought my new home, getting a carpet down in the bedrooms was one of the first things we did (we also replaced the grotty threadbare old carpet). Carpets make the house softer, warmer, cosier and generally more welcoming. However, unlike bare floors, if you spill anything on the carpet, it’s harder to get it up and off compared with, say, vinyl or lino (plain natural unvarnished wood is another story!). Nevertheless, I still wouldn’t be without a carpet in the home in spite of the problem of spills and stains.
However, I don’t want my place to turn into an insanitary dump, especially as I keep pets, which provides an added source of stains and smells in the carpet. You probably don’t want your home to smell and look foul either. This is why it’s important to deal with those stains in the carpets so that they look the way you want them to, whether you’ve got something lovely, scrummy and fluffy with a cut pile or a tough and durable loop pile carpet.
Accidents happen on any carpet and spills are inevitable if you live a normal life – and even if you live an abnormal or crazy life. With just about every stain that you can get on the carpet, speed is vital. Once a stain dries or sets, it’s so much harder to remove. I’ll say it again and again: quick action is essential!
Common Carpet Stains
The first thing that you should do to remove any stain is to scrape, wipe or blot up as much as you can. How you do this really depends on what you’ve spilt on the rug. Liquid spills can often be just blotted up with a dishcloth or a paper towel or toilet paper. In the case of really nasty staining liquids, first sprinkle a bit of salt on the liquid so that the liquid goes into the salt rather than the carpet fibres – then scoop or sweep up the sodden salt as soon as possible (try saying that quickly ten times). Solids can be picked up or scraped up. If the solid is something really smelly (e.g. vomit or pet poop) then resist all temptation to use the vacuum cleaner to do the removal job, unless you fancy the vacuum emitting the smell of old vomit or dog crap every time you use it for years afterwards.
Blotting and scraping often removes the worst part of any spill or stain. The next thing that you need to do is to flood the spill area with some plain liquid. Ordinary water is fine for this job, but folks often recommend club soda or white wine if you’ve spilt red wine on the carpet. This sounds like a waste of white wine, especially after a glass of pinot noir has taken a tumble already. The idea here is to (a) stop the stain drying out, (b) to dilute the stain and (c) to flood the stuff doing the staining out of the carpet fibres. Use cold water for this, folks, as hot water can cook and set some stains, especially things like blood or egg yolk.
After the flooding, you have to blot and blot and blot and blot to get as much water as you can up from the carpet. If the stain was something sticky like jam, then you might have to get out the detergent and a scrubbing brush and scrub the stain out as well.
For a lot of simple stains, that’s all you have to do. However, there might be a slight residue left behind in the carpet fibres simply because your paper towels or towels or old newspapers can only do so much. They also can’t do much to remove odours, so you may wish to call in a carpet cleaning company to deal with that side of the problem.
If your carpet is left with an “anti-stain” or a very, very clean patch in the middle of an otherwise dingy carpet, then perhaps it’s time that you got your carpets professionally deep cleaned!
Really Tough Stains
Some stains are a bit harder to get out of the carpet fibres. Take nail polish, for example. It’s easiest to apply polish to toenails while sitting on the carpet and it’s a good idea to put down something expendable (e.g. an old magazine) underneath while applying the polish. However, there’s always that moment when the cat jumps into the middle of the process. Other stains that can be quite hard to remove include wax, oils, dye, paint and glue – to say nothing of the nightmare of chewing gum. These don’t blot or flood out as easily as, say, red wine. The best that most of us can do is to scrape up as much as possible and avoid working whatever it is deeper into the carpet. You can try your best with a bit of solvent in the case of nail polish or paint, or detergent in the case of oils, but you can end up wrecking your carpet if the solvent doesn’t play nicely with whatever your carpet’s made from. The same goes for the methods of removing wax (covering it with a paper towel and applying a hot iron) and chewing gum (freezing it solid, then chipping it off).
Your best bet is not to try too hard with common household products – get on the phone or online and contact a good professional stain removal company ASAP.
Anyclean’s Stain Removal & Carpet Cleaning Services
If you find yourself panicking about what you’ve spilt on the carpet and you’ve got no idea how to get it out, you’re not alone. Take a nice, deep breath and get in touch with Anyclean’s carpet care team. We are experts at getting stains of all types out of carpets and if it’s too tough for us (this doesn’t happen very often but it does happen) then we’ll provide some official backing for your insurance claim.
Most importantly, from the perspective of stain removal, we can clean your carpets and treat those stains NOW. Speed is essential with the majority of stains because some things, once they set in the carpet fibres, are really, really hard to shift. This is why we’ve created our “Clean Me Now” emergency stain removal services. If you’re anywhere in the Greater London Metropolitan Area (that’s the area inside the M25 ring), you can scream for us and we’ll send out one of our carpet gurus to get rid of the mess – and there’s no extra call-out fee involved in this; just our regular carpet cleaning prices apply.
If your carpets aren’t exactly stained but are just a little dingy and grubby (or possibly smelly), then we can help you with that as well, as we have a full range of carpet cleaning services that we provide all through London. We can also help by protecting your carpets and upholstery by applying Scotchgard stain protection wherever you need it.
Our Range of Carpet Services
- steam cleaning (also known as hot water extraction or carpet shampooing)
- bonnet buffing
- dry cleaning for carpets using the environmentally friendly HOST system
- stain removal and spot treatment
- applying Scotchgard stain protection
- mat cleaning
- rug cleaning
- upholstery cleaning
- anti-static treatment
All of our carpet cleaners are fully trained to National Carpet Cleaners’ Association standards and we have full insurance cover on all the work we do. We cater to the needs of homes and businesses throughout London and we pride ourselves on our great customer service as well as our ability to clean carpets to perfection. We use a simple, straightforward pricing system and provide you with a quote before the work begins so there’s no nasty surprises involved.
Contact us today to find out more about our London carpet cleaning service. In fact, if you’ve got a stain on your carpets, contact us RIGHT NOW!